Interpersonal Skills vs. Interpersonal Awareness

There are people skills and there are true people skills. What we think of as “interpersonal skills” might include etiquette, small talk, eye contact, handshakes, smiling, saying thank you, reading people. These are all important and if you don’t already learned them, you definitely should. They help out a great deal in life.

Interpersonal awareness
True interpersonal skills are the manifestation of an intent and the intent is to treat others with the same understanding, compassion, respect and positive regard as you would like to be treated. Interpersonal awareness is based on the understanding of others, their needs, desires, motivations, and emotions. We use that awareness to make others feel respected, acknowledged, liked and even loved.

Method ActingYou’ve heard of “the method” when it comes to the great actors of our time. The “method” helps an actor not just to act like the character that he reads of imagines in the play or script but to act “as if” he or she is that character. They act as if through a number of methods but they primarily involve understanding the character’s motives and intentions and then reciting the lines but using the character’s intentions as motivations. They, in essence become the character.

I’m not advocating acting by any means. But I am advocating understanding why we want to treat others with respect, to listen, to acknowledge, to support. When we understand the intentions, the motives, then all of these behaviors like listening, be interested, being polite, sharing, become natural.

How Well Do You “Read” People? Take this free (anonymous) test…

Did you know that up to 80% of a human being's ability to "read" other people -- that is the ability to understand what another person is feeling whether it be love, anger, sadness, etc. -- comes from observing another person's eyes?

Folks with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) often are unable to read the eyes.Take this simple test by autism expert Simon Barron-Cohen (yes, he IS Sacha's uncle!) to see how you do on the people reading scale.

http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/faces/eyestest.aspx

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Free People Skills Test

Here is a fun, free Social Skills Test from psychtests.com>. It takes about 30 minutes, it's anonymous (you don't even give your email address) and the results will tell you a lot about your people skills and in what areaa you might use a tune-up.
What's fun about it? Questions like these: